Homemade Tartare Sauce

I'm writing this post from my mother's computer in her classroom. She brought me in to meet her class and now that I've been introduced and I have bragged about how I have the coolest job in the world (ah, something about being inside a room papered with Times Tables and the alphabet has my maturity regressing to pre-adolescence), I've been tasked with getting cashback on the netbook she generously bought for me (thanks, mum!), as she sits on the carpet and helps her charges learn to tell the time. Being a school, all of the decent websites are blocked so I can't access Gmail, Twitter or Facebook to find out what's going on in the world. For whatever reason, blogger has not been blocked so, now that I've printed the requisite form, I feel free to whitter away the time. Unfortunately my half-written posts and pictures are not on this pc so instead of backtracking over the more interesting events I've not yet written about from the past few months, I just thought I'd say a brief hello to the world and a quick comment on regressing and food in the back of beyond.

I learnt how to cook out of necessity. I prepared a dish to go alongside my mum's chips (my mum makes the best chips) earlier this week. If you've ever seen The Castle, the reaction I got for courgettes and cannellini beans with garlic, parsley and lemon, was almost exactly like Daryl's response to everything his wife cooked:
"What's this, love?"
"Aw, that's just sponge cake, love, it came out of a packet."
"Wow. You're amazing. I am the luckiest man in the world to have a wife that can cook like this."
These are not exact quotes. It's been a while since I watched it and, yes, you really have to watch it to get it.

Anyways, they were suitably impressed that I'd managed to make something out of the next-to-nothing in the cupboards. It's flattering, but frustrating. I have informed my dear mother that I need to go to the supermarket on the way back from school. "What for?" Um... because there are no other meals I can make out of what's in the cupboards and from the vegie garden. At least, not enough to feed five people a coherent meal that will fill them up. Cousin and his lovely wife are heading down from Sydney and I want to be able to feed them and the baby-on-the-way. Plus I want to be able to make a birthday cake with unsalted butter, not margarine.

Last night my dad took my mum and I out for her birthday dinner. I was tempted to offer to cook but didn't want to rain on his parade. So we went to dine at the pub with the balcony and beautiful view. The menu options were typical of an Australian pub: Chicken Schnitzel, Chicken Parmagiana, Steak, Reef and Turf, Calamari, Fish & Chips and Seafood Basket.

The Fish and Chips were described as "beer-battered, locally-caught gummy shark served with chips, salad, homemade tartare sauce and a wedge of lemon". Oh how I wish I could get the picture from my iphone to plug in here so you could see the plate with its two plastic servings of Masterfoods' tartare sauce, and no lemon. When I asked for lemon I was told there wasn't any. I asked behind the bar and managed to get a few water-logged slices. The chips began their life as frozen oven-fries. No surprise we decided not to stay for dessert. We went home and they had a few of the Charbonnel et Walker truffles I bought for her. I had Milo. Definitely regressing. :-)

Ah well, at least the scenery was pretty!